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You couldn't beat mum's damson jam

You couldn't beat
mum’s damson jam; damson jam doesn't taste the same now, but that is what
reminiscences do; they alter your taste. Sunday roast has never been the same
since either. So many differences! We didn't have a television for most of my
childhood. I used to watch Popeye at a friend’s house whose mum gave us bread
and jam for tea.We never had it so
good! Or at least that is what Harold MacMillan told us; and in so many ways he
was right. The Tories didn't taste the same either!

Not that it cut
any ice with mum; she was staunchly anti-Tory; didn't think much of the
Liberals either. Labour had set up the NHS and developed the welfare
state. The Tories, if you believed the
propaganda, were ‘setting the people free’ from Labour’s state control. Of course they were not; what was happening
was that people felt better as war-time rationing came to an end. People had
become frustrated at how long it was taking, and the Tories had been able to
capitalise on it.

There were more
goods to buy and a developing consumerism. Now we were consumers rather than
simply citizens. Labour lost the election in 1952 although they increased and
had the majority of votes. It heralded 13 years of ‘Tory rule’. The 1950s boom
would of course end in a kind of ‘bust’; but nothing like the financial
collapse we have had today. Boom and Bust, or ‘Stop-Go’, was the order of the
times; the ‘go’ would usually last for about 4 years; the economy would ‘over-heat’,
inflation would rise, costs would rise, exports would fall, imports would rise
and a balance of payments ‘crisis’ would bring it all to an end. Too much money follow too few goods. And that was
it in 1964 when Labour won the election and Harold Wilson became prime
minister.

I had started
work as a temporary clerical assistant in a branch of the Home Office. I can’t recall anyone at work who was pleased that Labour won; most were
Tory. Labour had barely a majority and
the economy was in a mess. I recall a lady at work telling me it would all end
in bankruptcy; Labour she told me had bankrupted the country when last in power under Atlee. It was as if the world war hadn't happened; Labour it
seems was to blame -a bit like the collapse of the banks now; convenient to
blame Labour for the mess. Propaganda is a powerful tool!

"Really?" I replied, "but Labour had created the NHS." That is why they left us bankrupt she
responded. That is how I had my tooth
pulled, I thought to myself, and my eye test and my glasses, and my measles jabs
etc, and my arm fixed when it was broken. If that was bankruptcy, then bring it on, I
thought, and smiled. She was a nice enough lady. That’s when I learned there
were a lot of nice people who didn't see the world as I saw it.

The Tories had
been forced to accept the welfare state; although it was clear from their manifest
in 1964 that they would begin to dismantle it. Had they gained another term,
rent controls would have been eroded further and private practice in the NHS would
have been developed. They talked
of ‘fair’ or ‘market’ rents for council housing determined by supply and demand
rather than subsidised rents families could afford. In London in particular
that had meant a lot. So-called ‘market
rents’ would mean that many would no longer be able to afford
the decent social housing. Thankfully
the Tories lost. But it was a warning; a marker laid down, and when the Tories
won in 1970 it was one of the major pieces of legislation, The Housing Finance
Act, that would compel Local Authorities to charge ‘market rents’. I remember it well because by 1971 I had become a member of Wandsworth Borough Council.

But in 1964 the
Tories adopted a social language, and for Butler and MacMillan society
mattered. Alec Douglas-Home the Prime
Minister and Tory leader wrote in his forward to their manifesto:

“The Conservative
purpose is clear from our record and from our programme. It is to raise the
quality of our society and its influence for good in the world.”

To raise the
‘quality of society’! This wasn't some Big Society nonsense of David Cameron. I
haven’t met a Tory would can tell me what 'big society means; and most will dismiss it as
nonsense. At best it means you cut public services and benefits forcing the
poor to depend on charitable hand outs and food banks and the good will of blue-rinsed
charitable ladies; big ladies for the big society.

In 1964 we all
‘believed’ in society. We just argued over what it was for and how it should
be. Labour and Tory (although to a less degree) believed that for many of our
problems there were social solutions. Society was more than an aggregate of
individuals; people behaved as members of families, of communities and of
society. And economic policy mirrored this view. Even the Tories believe in
economic planning of sorts. The Tories had set up a major planning committee, the
National Economic Development Council, bringing together representatives of government,
businesses and unions. They attacked Labour’s proposals for a national plan
and central planning, yet they adopted
many of the same planning approaches themselves. Neither party at that time
would have thought the only economic policy was to control the supply of money
through interest rates. ‘We were all
Keynesians’ as the Tory Rab Butler would say. And this was not surprising. MacMillan and Butler had been genuinely shocked by the ravages of unemployment in the 1930s and were determined not to see it again.

Then like now you had those who dismissed the parties as
‘being all the same’. It clearly wasn't the case. So much was different in the
manifestos. One of those differences I
have already referred to would raise its head again when Labour lost office in
1970 – housing and rents. It is still a fundamental difference today.

Full rent control had been reintroduced during the war (The
Rent and Mortgage Restriction Act 1939).
After the war the Labour government had introduced the Landlord and
Tenant (rent control) Act in 1949 empowering rent tribunals to determine a
reasonable rent. These controls had been dismantled by the Tories in the 1950s, ushering in the
scandals of unscrupulous slum landlords forcing tenants out of their homes. Labour had promised to restore controls and
repeal the Tory legislation and Harold
Wilson’s government rapidly moved to pass the Protection from Eviction Act in
December 1964 and the Rent Act in 1965 providing security from eviction. It was a major promise kept and was to transform the lives of many.

The Tories remain wedded to the idea of markets determining rents. But it was they who created the absurdity of a system of rent allowances that allowed landlords to hike up rents above the market. It all started with the 1988 Housing Act deregulating the rented sector, removing the rights to tenant protection and assessment of 'fair rents'. It meant landlords could increase rents subsidised by housing benefits. It introduced distasteful exploitation in the rented sector with rents inflated by the subsidy. The rented sector became a gravy train; and with the decline in social housing, increasing private sector rents meant that the housing benefit bill would spiral out of control. Now the Tories are forcing people to move by restricting the housing allowance. But it was a mess they created in the first place. It was they who 'sold the family silver' as MacMillan put it. Don't let anyone say there is no difference between the parties.

I left school at 15 in the 1960s without qualifications. My last school report said they could 'see no reason why public money should be wasted on the attempted education of this boy'. I grew up in a one-parent family on a council estate. I am now an academic, medical ethicist, author, writer and singer, composer and arranger, and lead singer with the Oxford Trobadors. I am a former Chair of a local government standards committee, I have a passion for ethics in public life and particularly governance.
I have served on NHS research ethics committees and as an ethics advisor on biomedical matters and tutor in medical ethics. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Medicine and the Higher Education Academy.
I am News Editor for Voices from Oxford and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at University College London and Honorary Professor of Medical Ethics at ASRAM Medical College, Eluru, India.
I appeared on The Stephen Nolan show (Radio NI), Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4), Nightwaves (BBC Radio 3) and various TV programs including 21st Century Girl's Guide to Sex and The Unofficial World Record of Sex. I am author of It Wasn't Always Late Summer.